Chapter 78 BONUS SCENE 3
Lucian’s POV
I woke up to the smell of something burning.
It wasn't the sharp, terrifying scent of a village on fire, nor the chemical tang of silver-gas. It was sweet, slightly acrid, and smelled suspiciously like someone had tried to sauté a beehive.
I shifted in the massive bed, my arm instinctively reaching out for Aria. She was already awake, propped up on one elbow, her dark hair a beautiful, tangled halo against the white pillows. She was sniffing the air, her nose wrinkling in a way that I still found adorable after all these years.
"Lucian," she whispered, her voice thick with sleep. "Is the Citadel on fire, or is Nina making her 'Special Solstice Bread' again?"
"Nina is in the village with Harl for the morning," I rumbled, sitting up. I reached for my robe, but before I could stand, the bond spiked with a frantic, desperate energy. It wasn't pain—it was guilt. Three distinct flavors of guilt.
"The triplets," we said in unison.
We didn't even bother with footwear. We sprinted down the stone hallway, my bare feet silent on the cold floors. As we approached the royal kitchens, the "burning" smell grew stronger, accompanied by a sound that could only be described as a wet thwack followed by a collective, horrified gasp.
I pushed the double oak doors open.
The royal kitchen, usually a place of pristine copper pots and organized spice racks, looked like a battlefield. A flour sack had clearly exploded at some point, coating every surface—including the ceiling—in a fine white powder. In the center of the chaos stood Leo, Lyra, and Adrian.
They were eight years old now, a transitional age where they were half-wolf, half-human, and entirely dangerous to property values.
Leo was covered in soot, holding a blackened frying pan like a shield. Lyra was standing on a stool, her face smeared with what looked like strawberry jam and egg yolk. Adrian, our scholar, was holding a cookbook upside down, staring at a bowl of grey sludge with a look of intense scientific disappointment.
"Happy Anniversary!" Leo shouted, though his voice cracked halfway through.
"We made... breakfast," Lyra added, pointing a sticky finger at a plate on the center island.
Aria stepped forward, her eyes wide as she surveyed the wreckage. "Breakfast? My darlings, it looks like you tried to sacrifice a sack of grain to the Moon Goddess."
I walked over to the "breakfast." It consisted of three charred circles that might have once been pancakes, a pile of raw bacon strips artfully arranged in the shape of a wolf, and a glass of juice that was a vibrant, alarming shade of purple.
"It’s a secret recipe," Adrian explained, his golden eyes flicking nervously toward the flour-covered floor. "I calculated the nutritional density of honey, eggs, and... well, we ran out of flour, so we used powdered sugar."
"The whole bag?" I asked, looking at the empty sack.
"It looked like the same thing!" Lyra defended herself, jumping down from the stool and leaving jam-covered footprints on the tiles. "And we wanted it to be sweet. Because you and Mama are sweet."
My heart, which had been hardened by decades of war, melted into a puddle right there on the kitchen floor. I looked at Aria. She was trying so hard to keep a straight face, but her eyes were shimmering with tears of laughter.
"Well," I said, pulling out a chair and sitting down with the gravity of a King at a summit. "I suppose we should eat."
Aria’s POV
Watching Lucian—the man who once terrified the entire Northern continent—pick up a fork and prepare to eat a pancake made of 90% powdered sugar and charred honey was the highlight of my life.
"Wait!" Lyra cried, scurrying to the counter. "It needs the sauce!"
She picked up a bowl of the grey sludge Adrian had been holding and poured it over the pancakes. It had the consistency of wet cement and smelled faintly of peppermint.
"What... exactly is the sauce, Adrian?" I asked, taking my seat beside Lucian.
"It’s a reduction of blackberries, mint leaves, and a little bit of the Alpha’s special ale we found in the larder," Adrian said proudly.
Lucian’s eyebrows shot up. "My Stout-Heart ale? The one Thorne sent from the High-Crag?"
"It added a robust, earthy undertone," Adrian quoted, likely repeating something he’d heard the head chef say.
Lucian took a deep breath, caught my eye, and took a massive bite.
The room went silent. The triplets leaned in, their breathing hitched in anticipation. Lucian chewed. His jaw muscles worked. His eyes widened, then watered. He swallowed with a sound that suggested he was pushing a rock down his throat.
"It’s..." he started, his voice a bit raspy. "It’s very... robust, Adrian."
"Do you like it?" Leo asked, his tail (which had popped out in his excitement) wagging furiously behind him.
"I have never tasted anything quite like it," Lucian said truthfully. He took another bite, shoved a piece of raw bacon into his mouth for good measure, and managed a smile. "It tastes like... victory."
I took a bite of my own. It was, without a doubt, the most disgusting thing I had ever put in my mouth. It was cloyingly sweet, strangely bitter, and had the texture of sand. But as I looked at the three soot-stained, hopeful faces of my children, I felt a rush of love so potent it made my chest ache.
"It’s perfect," I lied, reaching out to ruffle Leo’s messy hair. "The best anniversary breakfast in the history of Ashwood."
We sat there for an hour, the five of us, picking our way through the "meal." We didn't talk about treaties or taxes. We talked about how Leo had accidentally set a dishcloth on fire (and how Lyra had heroically extinguished it with a bowl of milk), and how Adrian had tried to "optimize" the egg-cracking process with a small hammer.
"The kitchen is a loss," I whispered to Lucian under the table. "We’re going to have to burn the whole wing down and start over."
"Worth it," he replied, his hand finding mine.
After the "food" was gone, the real fun began.
"You helped make the mess," Lucian announced, standing up and rolling up his sleeves. "Now, you help the Alpha and Luna of the Federation clean it. This is a lesson in... accountability."
"And bubbles!" Lyra shouted.
We turned the cleaning into a war. Lucian grabbed the giant wash-tub, filling it with hot water and so much soap that the bubbles began to overflow like a mountain of sea-foam. Within minutes, the kitchen was transformed into a playground.
Leo and Lyra shifted into their wolf forms, skidding across the soapy tiles like furry hockey pucks. Adrian used a mop as a lever to launch soap-suds at his father. I found myself in a corner with a scrub brush, laughing so hard I could barely breathe as Lucian—the Great Alpha—was chased around the central island by two soapy wolf-pups.
He eventually "tripped," falling into the pile of bubbles with a dramatic roar. The pups piled on top of him, barking and licking his face, while Adrian dumped a bucket of lukewarm water over the whole lot of them.
I leaned against the counter, watching them. The sunlight was streaming through the high windows, illuminating the soap-bubbles until they looked like floating pearls.
We did it, Lucian, I projected through the bond.
He looked up from the pile of children, a bubble perched on his nose, his eyes glowing with a warmth that could have lit the entire world. Yeah, he replied. We did.
By the time the kitchen was (mostly) clean, the sun was high in the sky. The triplets were exhausted, their bellies full of sugar and their fur damp and smelling of lemon soap. We led them up to the solar, where they promptly collapsed into a single, snoring heap on the oversized rug.
Lucian and I stood in the doorway, watching them.
"I still have the taste of that ale-peppermint sauce in my mouth," Lucian whispered, leaning his head against the doorframe.
"I think it’s permanent," I joked, wrapping my arms around his waist. "A permanent reminder of your children’s love."
"I can live with that," he said, pulling me close.
He kissed me then—a slow, lingering kiss that tasted of soap and sugar and thirty years of shared history. The chaos of the morning settled into a deep, vibrating peace. We weren't the heroes of the North or the architects of the South. We were just a man and a woman, standing in the sunlight of a home we had built from the ashes.
"Happy anniversary, Aria," he whispered.
"Happy anniversary, Lucian."
The Great Cook-Off would go down in Ashwood history as the day the Alpha almost met his match in a pancake. But for us, it was just another day in the eternal summer—a day where the only thing that mattered was the laughter in the air and the fact that the fire in the kitchen was the only one we’d ever have to fight again.